What will we learn today?
Scope and Assumptions
- Dis-engangling Causation from Correlation in Effects of Religious Service: Good-Life/ Cooperation
- Focus on “Individual Differences”
- Evolutionary Interests About How These Domains Are Related
Daily Counts of Processed NZAVS Surveys: Repeated Measures –> Causal Insights
Two Questions/ Two Domains
Eligibility
- Responded to the time 10 (2018/19) New Zealand Attitudes Study
- Information about religious service at baseline (yes or no).
- Inverse Probability of Censoring Weights for Attrition
- ‘Censored’ if responded during COVID lockdowns (NZAVS 10)
- A total of 46,377 individuals met these criteria.
Method
- Clearly stated causal estimands
- Semi-parametric Machine Learning
- Censoring models to recover what would have happened to population.
- New Zealand Census Weights to for population inference
- Cross-validation: Models always evaluated on unseen data
Context
Sample Demography
Two Types of Esimands
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Figure 1: ATE: Three-Wave: Binary Intervention
STUDY 1: Religious Service and The Good Life
1.1 Three Waves Good Life: ATE Causal Forests and Binary Exposure
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Figure 2: ATE: Three-Wave: Binary Intervention
1.2 Good Life: Compare 3 waves Binary vs. 3 waves ALL/NONE
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Figure 3: ATE: Three-wave Shift Intervention
1.3 Good Life Validation: Compare 3 waves Shift+1 Religious Service with 3 waves Shift+1 Socialising Hours
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Figure 4: ATE: Three-wave Soft Intervention
1.4 Good Life: Compare 3 waves ALL/NONE vs 6 waves ALL/NONE
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Figure 5: ATE: Six-wave Soft Intervention GAIN: +1
1.5 Good Life: Compare 6 waves ALL/NONE vs 6 waves SHIFT+1
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Figure 6: ATE: Six-wave Soft Intervention LOSS: -1
1.6 Good Life: Compare 6 waves SHIFT+1 vs 6 waves Shift-1
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Figure 7: CATE RATE
SUMMARY STUDY 1: GOOD LIFE
- Depends on which effect (single intervention vs five interventions/e.g. shift up/down)
- Unlikely to be due to hours of socialising (an overly conservative sensitivity analysis)
- Signals are detectable in binary forests
STUDY 2: Causal Effects of Religous Service on Cooperation
2.1 Three Waves Cooperation: ATE Causal Forests and Binary Exposure
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Figure 9: ATE: Three-Wave: Binary Intervention
2.2 Three Waves Cooperation: Compare 3 waves Binary vs. 3 waves ALL/NONE
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Figure 10: ATE: Three-wave Shift Intervention
2.3 Three Waves Cooperation: Compare 3 waves ALL/NONE vs. 3 waves SHIFT+1
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Figure 11: ATE: Three-wave Soft Intervention
2.4 Six Waves Cooperation: Compare 3 waves ALL/NONE vs 6 waves ALL/NONE
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Figure 12: ATE: Six-wave Soft Intervention GAIN: +1
2.5 Six Waves Cooperation: Compare 6 waves SHIFT+1 vs 6 waves Shift-1
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Figure 13: ATE: Six-wave Soft Intervention LOSS: -1
Summary Study 2: Cooperation
STUDY 3: Individual Differences
3.1 Indv Diff: RS->Good Life: RATE
3.2 Indv Diff: RS->Good Life: UPLIFT
3.4 Indv Diff: RS->Good Life: POLICY 1
3.3 Three-wave Individual Differences: CATE Policy Tree: 1
3.4 Three-wave Individual Differences: CATE Policy Tree: 2
3.5 Three-wave Individual Differences: CATE Policy Tree: 3
3.6 Three-wave Individual Differences: CATE Policy Tree: 4
Overall Findings
Important Limitations
Links be Cooperation and Well-Being
- 76,409 individuals who have participated in the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study since 2009.
- Templeton Religion Trust: #0198 / #0418
- University of Auckland / Victoria University of Wellington / Georgia State University
- Graduate Students & Colleagues